Abusive relationships

The powerful forces that can generate cohesion and creative vitality among people can also become bent and twisted into a dynamic configuration that persists and intensifies abuse.

Sadly, this means that domestic abuse and workplace abuse are common, particularly since they involve the emotional power of authority along with other cohesion. On a larger scale, entire groups, cultures, and nations can become latched into and locked into an escalating self-perpetuating cycle of codependent abused and abuser.

One of the goals of this work and this weblog, ultimately, is to define the positive direction of the hierarchy of social relationships so clearly and so compellingly that a route to them can be found and will be taken from anywhere, including from the depths of an abusive or mutually destructive relationship.

Western society has an almost complete lack of decent role models for relationships, whether they include a hierarchy of authority or not. The role model called "rugged individualist" does not lend itself to being a "team player" in a relationship.

Lacking seriously powerful role models and the training and tools that help one get to a positive relationship, most couples, teams, departments, companies, cultures, religions, and countries fall back into the most primitive type of "Rambo / slave" relationship in order to have any coherence and order at all.

This tends to be very emotionally and strongly defended as "THE ONLY WAY" that things could ever be, which of course it is not. But we need a lot more examples than we have of how things could and should be, for others to learn from and copy.

Sadly, the transition to new forms will not be without screeching, and pushback, by those who prefer the old forms.